Within a Dragon's Gem
by Throwrand
Summary: Ruby finds herself helpless under the jaws of a dragon. Resigning herself to death, she awakens to find the dragon gone and herself unhurt. Upon further inspection, she discovers that she gained aspects of the creature that spared her.


Qrow had hoped that Ruby waking up would put some much needed brightness into the Xiao Long household, but in hindsight that might be too much of a miracle even for Ruby Rose. Yang very much took after her father to an uncanny degree and the recent dismemberment confirmed that she also inherited his "coping" mechanisms. He had been furious with Tai after Summer's death. How dare he simply shut down and leave his daughters to fend for themselves? Sure they made it out stronger than ever and it made them the people they were today, but Qrow wasn't ever going to forget when Ruby came in to private lessons only to collapse within minutes from not being fed over the weekend. The money for groceries hadn't materialized that week. Tai was now in a similar position, watching his daughter let everything fall apart. Rather than, say, rise to the challenge and raise his goddamn daughters for once, Tai was following Yang back into depression. Hence Qrow babysitting up till now. Unfortunately, he needed to start following Ozpin's footsteps and simply couldn't afford to stick around. And with that, he left the Xiao Long household in the hands of a 15 year old girl and flew off into the wilderness.

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Ruby was rapidly approaching the point of running off into the woods and never returning. She was certainly good enough with her scythe to make a living. The sheer volume of negativity that her house gave off was enough to draw seemingly every Grimm that wasn't already swarming Beacon. Ruby exhaled deeply as she leaned against a tree, having just finished off the most recent pack to wander too close for comfort. "At least I won't be rusty when they find a school to put us in," she mused. Glancing at her scroll, Ruby saw that an Ursa had wandered into her warning zone and a couple Borbatusk were at the edge, but nothing that demanded her immediate attention. Since Ruby had no desire to head back home early, this meant she could do something fun. 3 days ago she had spotted a cave about half-way down the cliff her mother's grave was at the edge of, and now she had the opportunity to explore it. Ruby left the clearing at an easy jog.

Upon arriving at the cliff Ruby scouted out the entrance. It was small and had a small rock outcropping directly above it, which was probably the reason no one had noticed it earlier. Ruby leapt down to the rock outcropping, using her aura to absorb the fall. Glancing over the edge of the outcrop, she saw that there was nothing particularly difficult about getting from there into the entrance. Ruby used her scythe as a pivot and swung into the cave entrance. The cave was a good deal smaller than it first appeared. After the first small alcove the cave quickly became a narrow crawlspace. After a few tests to find a way to turn around in such a confined position, Ruby pressed onward into the earth. Crawling, crawling, crawling, ow my knee, crawling, crawling, crawling. After a claustrophobic 10 minutes, Ruby reached the end of the tunnel. She stuck her head out and immediately regretted it. The room was taken up almost entirely by a colossal metallic dragon. Ruby had always dreamed of finding and fighting one of these mythical beasts like the characters in her stories, but it could've been under far better circumstances. Ruby panicked and started trying to finish getting out of the tunnel as quickly as possible, scrabbling at the stone and, in her frantic motions, managing to wedge herself in the tunnel. At the same time, the dragon began to stir from its slumber, and brought itself to its full height, dwarfing the struggling red-cloaked girl. "No, no, no, no," Ruby was fully in a panic now. She closed her eyes as the dragon brought its head closer. After a few moments of terrible waiting, Ruby suddenly felt like she had been dunked in ice water, and she blacked out.

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Ruby's first thought upon waking up was surprise. It took her a moment to figure out what she should be surprised at. After a few moments of confusion she remembered going into the tunnel and discovering the dragon, being helpless to defend herself and resigning to her fate, and then nothing. This was the same room that had contained the dragon before, and she was still stuck halfway into the tunnel, but she was alive and felt unharmed, if a bit sore. Honestly though, for having fallen asleep in such an awkward position even the soreness was less than it should be. Looking around the small room warily, as though the dragon could've sequestered itself behind the nonexistent cover, she pulled herself out of the tunnel. As soon as she was on her feet it was clear that something was different, she felt like she weighed about 20lbs. Ruby quickly discovered that this wasn't the only strange alteration, as after a moment of looking around she noticed something was off about her hands: they were covered in silvery scales. Ruby just stared at them, half of her wishing they were some hallucination and the other half hopelessly confused. Shaking her head, Ruby quickly gathered up the few things she had brought in with her and made a beeline for home. Walking home was more awkward than normal, due entirely to Crescent Rose now being more than twice as heavy as she was, but thankfully no Grimm showed up to trouble her. She got to her room without talking to either Yang or her father, and started undressing to take inventory of everything that had happened to her.

Firstly, she weighed 23.8lbs. Her strength and aura didn't change though, meaning that her muscles must now be made of something lighter than regular muscle tissue. Her bones also had to be lighter to achieve that weight, but she couldn't think of a good way to tell if their strength had been compromised. Her build appeared to have gotten thinner and sleeker. She was pretty ambivalent on that point and moved back into the realms of surreal weirdness. The next addition to catalogue: parts of her had scales. At first she had been afraid they were everywhere, but they appeared to just be on her lower legs and forearms. She reached around to see if there were any on her back and found the last and most drastic change. Ruby turned to the mirror to confirm what she had just felt. She rolled her shoulders and could see, clear and undeniable, she had wings. "Oh boy," Ruby said. Her first inclination was to be super excited because, well, she got to fly. How many people get to say that? However, there were also a large number of problems that this whole thing had generated. She was going to need to make Crescent Rose lighter so that it didn't screw with her center of balance so badly, and until she got that done she wasn't going to be able to keep the Grimm back. Secondly, she had seen the kind of discrimination the faunus got, and she had far more noteworthy animal traits that even the most pureblooded faunus. The last issue was perhaps the most troubling. If she was going to use her wings, she would need an outfit that could accommodate them. That would mean either abandoning or cutting holes in her cloak. She knew she couldn't ever bring herself to cut it, but she had been holding onto that piece of Summer for so long to simply stop wearing it. As she was debating this, Ruby realized she didn't actually know for sure if she could fly. All of the changes seemed to imply that she could, being lighter and getting a more aerodynamic body, but there was a real possibility that she couldn't fly and none of this was an issue. Ruby put on one of the two outfits she had that barred her shoulders and went back outside.

Her family appeared to be holed up in their rooms and didn't spot her as she left. She wished they were happier, but at that moment she was glad no one interrupted her. She left her house and went around to the back where there was more space. She spread her wings and experimentally flapped them a couple times. She was lifted off the ground a few inches and thrown badly off-balance, but given that she hadn't been using her full strength that was a promising result. Deciding to emulate a documentary on birds she had seen when she was younger, she went into a runner's stance. In the next moment she burst forward using her semblance to augment her speed into the super human realm. As she was approaching the tree line she snapped her wings open. This immediately lifted her into the air, flipped her upside down, and crashed her into a tree. "Ow, ow, ow," Ruby clutched her head, "That isn't as easy as the birds make it look." Deciding to go with the simpler method, Ruby broke into a jog and leapt into the air. She opened her wings and, just like that, was flying. She was still a clumsy excuse for a flying creature, but it was incredible. It took everything she had to not loudly squeal with excitement. She quickly found her shoulder muscles growing tired and landed. She would have to work on her endurance so that she could fly for long time periods, but unfortunately there were still a few practical concerns to handle.

Ruby returned to her room and put on her normal outfit, before grabbing her scroll and dialing Qrow. Ruby could use her weapon if she needed to, but her center of balance while using it had been drastically changed. She probably could still keep the Grimm back, but she would much rather not face the consequences if she was wrong. Plus, Qrow could help her with tricks to lighten her scythe. Qrow also provided another advantage over simply asking some Beacon friends to help: he might know or be able to figure out what happened to her. She was starting to get over the initial shock and so far it seemed like the changes weren't necessarily a bad thing, but she really had no clue what else this could entail. As per usual Qrow picked up at the very last ring.

"Hey Rube, everything alright with the Rose-Xiao Long clan?" he said.

"Yeah… mostly? It's hard to explain." Ruby could hear a sigh of mild irritation. "It is! It's really weird, but I need your help because I need help with the Grimm and have to ask some questions."

"I'm about to leave Vale and need to restock anyways, so I'll head to Patch for a few days. I'll let you ask your questions in person if that's what makes you feel better," Qrow responded.

"Thanks Uncle Qrow."

"Hey, I couldn't leave my favorite nieces if they needed help." After a slight pause Qrow continued, "I've got to go Ruby, there's still a few more places to investigate before I leave Vale. Tell Tai I'll be there in a couple days." Without further comment, Qrow ended the call.

As soon as Qrow mentioned her father Ruby realized that she had yet to tell her father anything about what happened. She probably should've talked to him before asking Qrow to come to their house. Too late now. The only remaining thing to do was tell Dad and Yang.

As Ruby pondered the best way to do this she understood Blake's struggle a lot more. Telling them and then running away seemed like one of the stronger options. She knew intellectually that neither her father nor sister would do anything to hurt her because of this, but her emotional side could only think of them disowning her or something. After much deliberation, Ruby decided to wing it and went to visit Yang.

"Hey Yang, I need to talk," Ruby said after knocking.

"What's up?" Yang said, still lacking the warmth that she had before the Battle for Beacon.

Ruby walked into the room; Yang was facing towards her, but clearly wasn't focusing. "Yang…" Ruby watched Yang's face for a reaction. Yang seemed dead set on moping, and continued to face out the window. "There's something wrong with me, and I'm trying to tell you about it!" Ruby said, "Just because something bad happened doesn't mean you just give up. You and Dad both can't cope with anything, and refuse to believe that a bit of effort could improve things!" The stress of her changes combined with the pain of watching her sister waste away from depression had pushed Ruby too far, and she was saying everything that had been pent up for the last two weeks. "If you would just move on you could still do everything you wanted, but NO. YOU AND DAD BOTH JUST LIE AROUND AND FORCE ME TO TRY AND FIX THINGS. WELL I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING AND EVEN WHEN I HAVE A PROBLEM NEITHER OF YOU CAN BE THERE TO HELP OUT."

Yang didn't take this well. "Oh yeah, that would explain why you spend all your time out in the woods trying to find any excuse to avoid us. You're too special to deal with a cripple and her depressed father since you're so special: the silver eyed warrior of legend and myth. What problem couldn't you solve with your magical powers that we mortal hunters could never aspire to?" It was at this moment that Yang noticed the scales that covered Ruby's arms and legs. Unfortunately, Yang's sheer bull-headedness wouldn't let her step back, "Why don't you go off and leave us to die? Don't deny you haven't wanted to since the day you woke up." Both of the sisters were on the verge of tears.

"Fine," Ruby spat.

Taiyang walked into the room after hearing the commotion, but Ruby was already sprinting away. As she ran Ruby threw off her cloak, jumped a short distance into the air, and unfurled her wings. She activated her semblance and quickly shot over the horizon.

Tai was speechless, repeated starting questions before thinking better of it and stopping. Yang was trying hard to stay mad, but was quickly realizing that Ruby actually had something happen to her. As soon as the adrenaline left her system, Yang felt awful about what she had done. "Why couldn't I just listen to her? Ugh, I had to be so stupid and start a fight," Yang bemoaned.

"It might not have been your fault. Her mind could've been altered by whatever that was," Tai said, finally finishing a thought. "We don't know what all could've changed, so we need to assume the worst." Tai looked pained. "Call Qrow, hopefully one of us three can find her before someone, or something, else does. Tell him what we know, and tell him to assume Ruby could be violent." Tai went back to get his weapon as Yang called.

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Ruby had circled back shortly after she had flown off. As soon as she left the fight she regretting what she had said and regretting running away. As she got to the edge of visual range of the house a splitting pain in her ears forced her to land in a nearby oak tree. Her head felt like someone was pounding nails into it, but it was already fading as she sat on a thick branch. She reached up to massage her ears in a vain attempt to stop the sudden pain and discovered that they had flattened and been covered in the same scales as her arms and legs. As the pain faded, her hearing seemed to expand. Her blood froze and she could feel her throat seizing up as she heard her father: "tell him to assume Ruby could be violet." "They think I'm a monster. Dad called me a Grimm." Ruby wanted so badly to fall from the tree sobbing. "I don't know what happened! Please let me be your daughter, I didn't want any of this," Ruby wanted to shout. She could hear her father's gauntlets clinking into place around his wrists. Ruby gathered her willpower and stopped herself from crying. Somehow proving that she wasn't a monster could wait, for the moment she needed to survive. She needed to get further away. She jumped off the tree, opened her wings, and flew away from her home yet again.

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Author's Note:

Hello everyone. This was just an idea I had a few weeks ago (it takes me forever to actually write something up) so hopefully it turned out well. Expect this to update incredibly infrequently; it actually takes me several weeks to write one of these. Thanks for reading. Please follow, favorite, and/or review if you feel so inclined. Hope everyone enjoys.


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